What a first offshore hire really costs
The hourly rate is the number everyone compares and the least useful one. Here is the full cost structure, including the parts that only show up in month three.
Writing
Notes on building and scaling
What I have learned running these companies, written for people doing the same thing. No frameworks invented after the fact.
I write about four things, because they are the four things I have actually had to solve: building remote and offshore teams that hold up, getting a revenue system out of the founder's head and into something measurable, the operational changes that scaling forces on a company, and the honest version of running several businesses at once.
If you are hiring across borders, start with the four mistakes behind most failed offshore hires. If you are deciding whether the numbers work, read what a first offshore hire really costs. If growth has stalled and you cannot see why, try startup to enterprise.
Job specs that survive a timezone gap
A brief that works when you can tap someone on the shoulder falls apart across seven hours. The fix is not more detail, it is a different kind of detail.
Startup to enterprise: what actually changes
Most companies do not fail at scale because the product stopped working. They fail because the things that made them fast at ten people quietly become the things that break them at a hundred.
What I would tell myself in 2021
Five years and three companies later, the things I got wrong were not the ones I was worried about at the time.
How to build an offshore team without the quality drop
Nearly everyone who has had a bad experience hiring offshore made the same four mistakes. None of them are about where the person lives.
The revenue system most startups skip until it is too late
Founder-led sales works until it does not, and the switch flips faster than most teams expect. Here is what has to exist before it does.
One email a month
What I learned running three companies, written for people building their own. No pitches.